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DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED IN 



HARVARD CHURCH, CHARLESTOWN, 



On Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 29, 1860. 



BY GEORGE E. ELLIS. 



CHARLESTOWN: 

ABRAM E. CUTTER. 

1860. 



" f ^e Ittstttotian of tl]{ states lnitt!) : " 



DISCOURSE 



DELIVEPEP IN 



HARVARD CHURCH, CHARLESTOWN, 



On Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 29, 1860. 



BY GEORGE E. ELLIS. 



CHARLESTOWN : 
A B R A ]\r E. C U T T E R. 

ISGO. 






N EXCHANOa 



C- 



AX M-'wa-aT, 



BOSTON : 

IMilNTEn HY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 

22, School Street. 



5r 



f 



DISCOURSE. 



PSALM Ixxx. 14, 15. 
"Eetukn, we beseech thee, God of hosts! Look down from heaven, 

AND behold, and VISIT THIS VINE; AND THE VINEYARD WHICH THY 
EIGHT HAND HATH PLANTED." 

That devout supplication which we make to-day for 
our land, as the Psalmist made it for his, is an utter- 
ance of gratitude, thanksgiving, and trust. It blesses 
for the past, and asks blessings for the future. 

Among the subjects which the proclamation of our 
chief magistrate sets before us for oiu' thanksgiving 
and prayer to-day, it puts foremost this, — "the preser- 
vation of the States united." If we heeded the threats 
of some in one part of this Union, and the forebod- 
ings of others in another part of it, we might have 
our fears lest this might be the last Thanksgiving Day 
on which we should enjoy that blessing. We live in 
times and amidst events in which it is equally difficult 
and unwise to utter prophecies, whether they be sug- 
gested by the threats of some or the fears of others. 
We will venture upon no prophecies, save only those 
which our hopes and Avishes shall fashion for us 
when we realize anew the precious blessings, of peace 



and union. Those blessings are too vast and dear, 
and are shared in by too many, and are guarded by 
too many securities, to be put at easy risk. Passion 
and bitterness and reckless rage and grievous mis- 
understandings between brethren seem to threaten 
them for the moment. But the voice of wisdom may 
yet be heard ; words of reconciliation and terms of 
peace are yet to be offered ; and, if these fail, there is 
the strong arm of lawfid and righteous power, which 
may prevent violence without using violence. 

Let us find an appropriate lesson for the day in 
the aspects of public affairs among us, as they show 
us the need of wisdom and moderation and kindness 
in all classes of our citizens, especially in those who 
represent the antagonisms of party strife. Doubtless 
we have trouble before us. It has been so long 
threatening us, that it has become familiar. An issue 
presents itself to us in our national politics, which 
must sooner or later have arisen in our land, and 
which comes before us just now, perhaps, under far 
more favorable circumstances, and of really less for- 
midable aspect, than, a few years ago, we could have 
ventured to have hoped. While every other civilized 
nation on the earth has darker clouds hovering over 
its future fortunes than any which as yet we can see 
in our horizon, we could hardly have expected that 
Providence would wholly spare us those anxieties 
and conflicts by which nations, as well as individuals, 
hold their earthly inheritance. 

Our own land has already settled, by precedent 
and experience, some of the most difficult problems 



I 



of government, on which partial issues had arisen 
in former ages in the Old World. As imperfectly 
struggled with then and there, most direful wars and 
conflicts have again and again attended them. They 
have always, elsewhere, been arrested before reaching 
a final solution ; and have left popular liberty either 
under the control of re-established despotism, or 
grudgingly recognized by incomplete constitutional 
sanctions. It remains to be proved here, whether 
we are wise and strong enough to dispose of another 
issue which has arisen upon the terms of our own 
national compact. There is a constitutional obliga- 
tion binding upon us, about which the feelings and 
interests of those who are parties to it are now in 
sharp conflict. We are bound by a bond, one of the 
terms of which is discredited by the sentiments of 
humanity and the principles of righteousness recog- 
nized by one of these parties ; while, at the same 
time, the pride and interest and circumstances of the 
other party prompt them to a tenacious exaction of it. 

Most of us can and do take but a moderate interest 
in politics. Many of us have a great distaste to it, 
and would like to spend all our days in ignorance and 
silence about it. Our ideal of a good government, 
of the sort of government we should like to live 
under, and of the way in which we should be glad 
to have things go on, is one that is fashioned by our 
wishes, and takes no account of practical difficulties. 
All the most important nominations to oflEice, and 
measures of government, among us, originate with 
a few persons who propose themselves for these 



responsibilities ; and the decisions and elections, in 
every case, are made by less than half the legal 
voters of the land. Officials, from the highest to the 
lowest stations among us, are chosen by minorities ; 
partly because many of us are wholly indifferent 
about voting at all, and partly because there is so 
little room for choice among the candidates proposed, 
that we are as ready to submit to one as to another 
of them, but do not wish to be responsible in any 
way for either. It probably is not strictly true, as is 
very often asserted both here and abroad, that the 
wisest and best and ablest and most competent and 
most honest men among us all keep out of politics, 
refuse office, and even waive their rights as electors 
at the polls. On the contrary, there is probably a 
fair average of all the intelligence and virtue of our 
citizens represented and possessed by those who ffil 
our various political offices and manage public affairs. 
But there ought to be more than an average of our 
intelligence and integrity in these places of great 
trust, at the springs of our public life. The large 
numbers of wise and modest and upright men, who 
refuse to concern themselves with public affairs, are 
needed, Avitli all their now unused influence, to give 
a predominance to the wisdom and rectitude of our 
councils. It is observable, that, the more narrow and 
retired the sphere of public duty, the more faithfully 
is it filled ; while, as we rise to the higher and more 
public places of office among us, the more indifference, 
carelessness, and corruption do we encounter. In the 
many tliousand towns and cities of our land, in quiet 



country villages and rural municipalities, there are 
faithful and wholly unrewarded officials, — treasurers, 
trustees, selectmen, and overseers, — of all grades 
and of all work, who do every year an untold amount 
of hard labor for others, and do it all well ; serving 
their fellow -men at their own cost, ungrudgingly; 
bringing common sense, industry, and integrity to 
bear in ways which secure and guard the thrift and 
the happiness of millions. These are the public men 
of private life ; and the less politics interferes with 
them or with their offices, the better is it for all of us. 
The moment party political issues work themselves 
into these quiet scenes, where there is really no party 
question at issue, then the integrity of all office-holders 
is impaired ; we have to fall back upon a lower grade 
of public men ; we select poorer candidates ; and we 
bring into private life, and once friendly neighbor- 
hoods, animosities of the most imbittering character. 
But, as we rise to higher and more i^ublic offices, — 
those which take men from their own homes and 
neighborhoods and joint interests in town or village, 
and carry them into great halls of legislation, — we 
seem to miss in them more or less of the simple, 
homely, straightforward qualities of the selectmen of 
our town-governments, and to discover in them the 
arts and wiles of politicians. They become schemers, 
calculators : the cunning ones among them use the 
pliant ones. We may read all the debates, and count 
all the votes, and think we understand exactly how 
things are managed, — all fair upon the face of them. 
But, by and by, — a few years, it may be, after, or 



8 



perhaps not till a generation has passed, — there 
comes out a " secret history of legislation ; " and we 
find that a rogue or an intriguer behind the scenes 
was artfully directing, for ends of his own, some 
public measure. There are influences and excite- 
ments attending official service in high places, which 
are almost irresistibly deteriorating in their effect 
upon character. AVhile motives of the loftiest and 
purest sort have their scope and trial on that field, 
thrilling the soul of the patriot and controlling the 
heart of the good man, there are abounding means 
and temptations for evil. The necessity of conciliat- 
ing, or keeping terms with, all sorts of persons, and 
of dealing with their prejudices and interests, tends 
to impair the sincerity and the independence of their 
representative. The wear of body and of mind, the 
exhaustions of debate, the irregularity of habits, and 
separation from the restraints of home, lead to or 
aggravate a dependence on stimulants. A politician 
who has served through an extended public life 
without truckling to meanness, or compromising his 
manhood, or sacrificing his bodily vigor through 
sensual excesses, has resisted a greater variety of 
stronger temptations than are off'ered together in 
their full force, and without balancing securities, 
in any other sphere of human life. And if, as we 
haye reasoij to believe, the sterling integrity and 
scrupulousness of public men become steadily im- 
paired or qualified exactly as we go up from retired 
municipal trusts to higher scenes and offices of politi- 
cal service, we should expect that porruption would 



9 



culminate in public life at the seat of our national 
government. And, sad as it is to allow it, there is 
reason to think that such is the fact. So, at least, we 
are told; so, some of us dread to think we have some 
cause to believe. 

Those who remember the story of the life of Martin 
Luther may recall the account, given in his own 
words, of an incident early in his career, which 
perhaps gave the first impulse, as it certainly did the 
lifelong energy, to his assault upon the corruptions 
of the Church of Rome. It was while he was still a 
young monk, burning with zeal, and with unhalting, 
implicit allegiance and devotion to the church, that 
he was sent on some mission of his order to Home. 
He has recorded the pious glow and fervor of heart, 
the intensely kindled joy and hope, with which he 
anticipated his entrance to the Holy City. As he ap- 
proached nearer and nearer, his ardor and devotion 
burned with a fire which lifted him into an ecstasy 
of expectation. He threw himself down to kiss 
the earth, oftener and oftener, as he came toward the 
shrine of his faith. He looked to find in that centre — 
that living, beating heart of the world's high church 
of the Lord Jesus — all that was radiant in beauty, 
all that was lovely in purity, all that was awe-inspiring 
and inthralling in the sway of a meek and lofty piety. 
Bitterly — oh, how bitterly ! — did the delusion break 
upon his soul ; and what a rage of horror and dread 
convulsed his heart ! He saw around" him a mockery 
and an off'ence, — idolatry, covetousness, and blasphe- 
my ; and there the blade which he afterwards wielded 



10 

for God's truth and Christ's church was tempered and 
sharpened. 

Is it not often with hopes and thoughts thus raised, 
to be in like manner dashed and saddened, that thou- 
sands of our own citizens from Northern homes, or 
visionary strangers from the old lands of oppression 
and corruption, visit our own capital city, Washing- 
ton, — a place called by the noblest and most revered 
name ever borne by a man, but which, as yet, has 
added no lustre to that name 1 What might we look 
to find in visiting that centre of our nation's life and 
counsels ? The picked and chosen men from our 
great federation of States (a few hundreds) are there ; 
men supposed to be fitting representatives of the mil- 
lions of both sexes, and of every age in our land ; 
men generously, comfortably, and honorably cared 
for, with momentous interests committed to them, and 
with opportunity to do all that God and man require 
of them by simple wisdom and integrity. Wise and 
good men there are among them, — patriots, states- 
men, Christians. God forbid that w^e should doubt 
it ! But that good leaven does not work through the 
lump, nor give character to Congress, nor stamp its 
unmistakable influence upon the hfe and deeds of our 
public men. Who that has witnessed the undignified 
looks and doings of those high functionaries, and 
marked their noise and brawls, and seen how many 
of them are imbruted by licentiousness and drunken- 
ness, armed with deadly weapons and ready to use 
them, — who that has known of and seen these thinss 
has not turned away from them with grief that it 



11 



should be so, and with dread of what may come from 
it all ? And when we learn what things have to be 
tolerated and winked at, and what concessions of prin- 
ciple and integrity have to be made for ends of party 
and of policy, how vain it is for us to ask, Why this 
needs be so I The fact that it is so would hardly be 
cheered by having any particular reason assigned for 
it. What sin of any sort or kind in this world is 
either explained or relieved by being, as we say, ac- 
counted for ? All that w^e can offer in explanation of 
the corruptions of party politics and public life among 
us is in simply saying, that such corruption is the form 
which common human frailty assumes in that particu- 
lar sphere of life which we call politics. But while 
there is little comfort found in trying to account for 
the fact that party spirit and human passions may cul- 
minate in their most deplorable influence at the centre 
of our government, our true practical wisdom lies in 
recognizing the fact, and in forming our opinions, 
expectations, and measures in reference to it. The 
truth is, we overrate the intelligence and the moral 
strength of men in the mass, in all our communities. 
We judge men by an ideal standard which they by no 
means reach. What we need is practical good sense, 
and moderation of spirit, alike in our public men and 
in our judgment of our public men. W^e need a tem- 
pered tone of discussion, comprehensiveness of view, 
and a large allowance for conflicting interests, in mat- 
ters which concern millions of human beings, mixed 
and influenced as they are. Our eminently good and 
kind-hearted men — Christians, idealists, reformers. 



12 



peace men, and philanthropists — do excellent service 
in forming and announcing better theories of society, 
and beautiful schemes of liberty, righteousness, and 
love, as applied to the heterogeneous elements which 
make up the human race. But our wise and shrewd 
men, calculating, conciliatory, compromising, are none 
the less needed to administer from year to year in the 
joint interests, the rival claims, and the sharp animo- 
sities, of a nation's politics. We must take things as 
they are, and we must take men as they are, in this 
world. They present themselves to statesmen and 
magistrates as the subjects of a government ; but that 
government must be adjusted and administered with 
reference to the actual material and the actual capa- 
city of a community of human beings. We cannot 
draw upon our visions of what might be and of what 
ought to be, any further than we can turn the ideal 
into the practical by steady processes of improvement. 
Whoever has witnessed the fury of an impassioned 
mob realizes the necessity of laws and of weapons 
which may sleep so quietly as to be well-nigh forgot- 
ten, though they must not be allowed to lose their vi- 
tality. Whoever has traced the progress of a single 
popular delusion, or been equally amazed and amused 
by the success of some medical nostrum, can appre- 
ciate more fairly the average intelligence of our own 
community, for instance, than can another who has 
read all the reports of our Board of Education, and 
analyzed the various tables which illustrate them. 
Once a year, the orators and preachers of the Peace 
Society stand up, and plead unanswerably for their 



13 



sacred cause, as they prove the folly, the sin, and the 
evil of war. But none the less, year after year, do 
the cabinet-ministers of courts and republics, sitting 
around their council-tables, find it necessary to discuss 
the merits of new and more destructive cannons and 
rifles, and to send so many regiments here or there 
where they are wanted. As between theorize rs and 
practical men, we may allow the former to rule in our 
wishes ; but we must trust the latter with our real 
work. When the French Minister of State, Cardinal 
Richelieu (a wonderfully sagacious man), and Father 
Joseph, a visionary man, were once planning a cam- 
paign, they spread before themselves a rough outline 
or map of an extended region of half- wild, half-culti- 
vated territory, which their army would have to tra- 
verse. Father Joseph, placing his finger at a point in 
the course of a wide and deep river, said, " The bag- 
gage, ordnance, and ammunition will cross here." — 
" You forget," interrupted the cardinal, — " you for- 
get that your finger is not a bridge." We may imagine 
bridges over wide and deep rivers ; but it is very diffi- 
cult to get heavy things over such structures. We 
may imagine bridges where we cannot even build 
them. The theory of perfectionism will not work in 
our Congress during our day. Besides, we must 
remember, that if many of the representative politi- 
cians of the nation there gathered are men of a low 
standard of morals, conduct, and principles, they re- 
present constituencies just like themselves. They 
stand before us to signify of what mixed elements the 
separate sovereignties of a nation like ours is made 



14 



up. Gamblers and drunkards and brawlers, passion- 
ate, tyrannical, and self-willed men, in Congress, are 
only specimens of classes of people who have to be 
protected and governed and dealt by, not theoretically, 
but with all possible practical wisdom. 

Again : Ave are to consider that our own republic is 
composed of elements of the most heterogeneous 
character, — of men historically, traditionally, so- 
cially, and politically quite imlike from the first ; and 
that circumstances have greatly aggravated and inten- 
sified some strifes and jarring interests which existed 
from the first among them. There are matters of dif- 
ference between us which involve some of the very 
highest and some of the very lowest principles and 
motives which have equal power with men, and which 
range all the way between conscience and the pocket, 
between pure righteousness and sordid meanness. 
It is certainly to be expected, that, in the strife of con- 
flicting interests, there would be some questions, even 
of right and wrong, which have two sides to them, 
and where those who have the abstract right on their 
side must temporize with an established WTong. All 
such issues as that which now confronts our nation 
will practically have two sides to them, because there 
are two parties to them. There is on record one story 
of ancient wrong, which we might suppose could have 
but one side to it, one version of it; viz., that Cain 
killed Abel. But tliere is actually in existence among 
the mountain-fastnesses of Eastern Asia a tribe of 
men who tell this story precisely in the other way. 
They claim to be the descendants of Cain ; and their 



15 



traditions insist that Abel was the wrong-doer, and 
that, though he did not kill Cain, he drove him away 
from home, and seized upon his inheritance. If that 
story has two sides to it, what party strife in all past 
or present time shall be considered as so wholly one- 
sided as not to need conciliation ? 

A rule of wisdom, well approved by time and 
honored authorities, assures us, that, before we on one 
side can enlighten or win over an opponent on the 
other side of an issue where the abstract and absolute 
right is complicated or disregarded because selfish 
interests are hazarded by it, we must first master his 
position. We must see his cause in the aspects and 
bearings in which it shows itself to him. Many of 
our most earnest reformers visit the sharpest severity 
of their censure, not upon the actual supporters of 
the sins and wrongs which they denounce, but upon 
friends and neighbors at their own sides who accord 
heartily with them in sentiment, but differ more or 
less widely with them in judgment. These unchari- 
table judgers of their brethren take for granted, that 
every unprejudiced and sincere person must hold 
their view as to the methods and measures Avhich 
alone can gain a desired object ; and then they infer 
that any dissent from them, however quiet its manifes- 
tation, is a token of some weak or base complicity 
with iniquity. But a slight difference of theory or 
judgment between parties, and the divisions of par- 
ties, in a complicated and imbittered issue, may result 
in a very sharp antagonism, when consistently followed 
out into practical measures. 



16 



It is often found to be true, that those subjects 
which, when discussed in some one of their bearings, 
partially, on one side, or, as they relate to local and 
temporary interests, are agitating and imbittering, 
may be treated calmly and much more wisely when 
we deal with them in their broadest relations. Thus 
it is, that what are the petty strifes of religious contro- 
versy, provoking passion and animosity, are divested 
of what is so odious and irritating, only by enlar- 
ging them as the themes for thorough and deliberate 
discussion. Thus, too, social schemes and theories 
concerning communism and reform and socialism are 
always Avild and mischievous when advanced by igno- 
rant, excited, or one-sided men ; while they always yield 
some wise and beneficent results when treated by men 
of comprehensive views, of generous and well-trained 
minds. And the same will doubtless prove to be true 
of that subject of slavery which is so passionately dis- 
cussed among us ; one party treating it from a moral 
point of view, the other party regarding it as it is 
connected with their pecuniary interests, their pride 
of feeling, and their political rights. The fanatics 
and the mischief-makers on both sides of our present 
strife (and there are not more than a dozen of them, 
all told, known by name), deal with the subject only 
with reference to parts and portions of its wide and 
broad relations. There are some very able volumes, 
which have been produced within the last few years, 
dealing with the subject of negro slavery as it exists 
in some of our States and elsewhere. A few of these 
books are written in a tempered and candid spirit. 



17 



making no concession on the score of policy or ex- 
XDediency to the gigantic iniquity with which they 
deal, but preserfljlng the facts connected with its exist- 
ence with such a painful cogency to the mind of an 
intelligent and unimpassioned reader, as to satisfy 
him that those who officially must legislate or act 
about slavery, whether to remove it or to defend it, 
must have regard to some other of its relations than 
those of right and wrong. Within the last half-score 
of years j^; too, elaborate and most positive defences of 
slavery ^ave been written and published, arguing for 
it as right in itself, as designed of God, as authorized 
by the Bible ; as a humane, a politic, and a benevolent 
institutio* Fifty years ago, doubtless, the grandpa- 
rents of the authors of these arguments would not 
have hesitated to protest that no such books could be 
written. But the whole subject, treated so thorough- 
ly in our literature, is treated superficially in popular 
harangues ; the opponents and the supporters of sla- 
very recognizing for the most part only one side of 
the actual issue. The moral wrong of slavery, and the 
consequent iniquities, dangers, and evils involved in it, 
fill the vision of one party among us so completely as 
to exclude a sufficient regard to the practical and 
political measures which are alike connected with its 
existence and its removal. The positive and unan- 
swerable facts, that slavery has a legal and constitu- 
tional existence ; that it has planted and strengthened 
itself among the very largest social, civil, and pecuni- 
ary interests of millions of persons, — these hard and 
unyielding facts bring moral considerations into con- 



18 



flict Mitli political relations ; and nothing will appease 
the strife, except views and measures which recognize 
all its bearings and all its elements. Those whose 
enormous pecuniary interests, whose sectional pride, 
and whose constitutional rights, are, as they think, 
most wrongly trifled with and insulted in this issue be- 
tween us, even if they have no real positive grievances, 
have reason to fear them. Their interests and pride are 
identified with an institution which the conscience, the 
judgment, and the wise policy, of the whole civilized 
world condemn, and which, as an enormous wrong, 
can produce only a preponderance of evil and mischief. 
That is a moral sentence which is indisputable and 
irrevocable. But it does not meet or satisfy the 
practical bearings, the matter-of-fact relations, of the 
issue with which our nation has to deal. If we have 
the curiosity and the patience and the tolerance to ex- 
amine all the large and comprehensive bearings of the 
subject of slavery as treated in modern discussions of it, 
we shall find that the subject covers questions opened 
in the whole field of human interest and duty, and 
takes in all the broadest concerns of our race. The sub- 
ject, in its fullest discussions, embraces scientific, moral, 
political, and economical inquiries ; and then, as a 
matter of legislation, and of conflicting convictions, 
and of enormous pecuniary interest, it gathers around 
it the intensest heats and passions of party and sec- 
tional strife. It is curious to observe, likewise, how 
some of the scientific theorizing on the creation of 
man and the question of races, which would griev- 
ously offend if regarded only in its relation to a 



19 

religious creed, is gladly welcomed by those who 
would have a divine as well as a human basis for the 
enslavement of one race of men by another. 

The profoundest inquirers into the secrets of natural 
science and the phenomena of life on this globe are 
engaged upon the question, whether all the human 
beings on the earth sprang from one and the same 
original pair. The question is, whether what we call 
the races or types of men which are now so strikingly 
unlike have reached to these varieties of color, con- 
stitution, capacity, and form, by the influences of 
climate, latitude, food, mode of life, and other natural 
agencies ; or were from the first created, not in one 
pair, but by several pairs, with all their varieties or- 
ganic in their respective stocks. So far, we have a 
purely scientific question. Are the white and black 
and copper-colored and red men now on the earth all 
alike the descendants of one Adam and one Eve, who 
might have been of either of these four colors ? or 
were there as many centres and sources of origin for 
all human tribes, as many original Adams and Eves 
on different continents and islands, as there are of 
distinctly marked races in the present forms of human- 
ity ? Science is to deal with that question as calmly 
and impassionately as if it were studying the natural 
history of animals or fishes. Science has its own 
methods for doing this. It studies languages, and 
asks if all of them can be traced back to one. It 
studies the paintings and sculptures of old Egypt 
and Assyria and Nubia to see if the human form 
had several thousand years ago the same outlines 



20 



and features which it has now. It searches after 
antediluvian human bones to measure them, and 
to decide whether men were giants or pygmies in 
those days. Science is working hard to fashion and 
to stand up for its own theories. Our own Agassiz, 
Avho has the repute of unrivalled eminence in those 
fields of science, has repeatedly announced, as the 
result of his own investigations, the necessity of recog- 
nizing a plurality in the centres and sources of the 
original stock of humanity on the earth.* 

But, while natural philosophers are studying this 
question of human races as a purely scientific one, 
it is taken up by another class of persons as a 
matter of very serious moral bearings ; and another 
issue comes, in this form : Are all the races of human 
beings on a level? Does the possession of the hu- 
man frame and features put all, who have them, on an 
equality "? Are black men as much human beings as 
white men'? Are they entitled to all the rights of 
men ? or has God made them an inferior, dependent, 
and subject race, fitted only for a servile lot, owing ser- 
vice to a nobler race of white men 1 In their home, in 
Africa, they are wretched and cruel, and scarcely 
human. Is the enslaving of them a providential 

* This modern scientific tlieory of the plurality of the sources of the human 
stock, adopted by the most eminent philosophei-s from evidence satisfactory to them, 
does not lack receivers among the most devout adherents to the authorit}' of Scrip- 
ture. It is argued that the theorj^ is not inconsistent with any passages in the Bible, 
Avhile it relieves and explains some difficulties found in it. The theory accounts 
for the existence of those whom Cain, the exile, feared might kill him, and for those 
who might help him to build and occupy a city. Moreover, the theory provides Cain 
■with a wife other than his sister, — a relationship forbidden by the law of Moses 
(Lev. xviii. 9), and referred to before the promulgation of the law, as an abomina- 
tion by which former occupants defiled the land, and for which God abhorred them 
(Lev. xviii. 27, and xx. 23). 



21 



method of benefiting them'? There may be a long 
leap made from the conclusion, if established by sci- 
ence, of the original creation of human beings by 
distinctions of race, to the inference, that either one 
of these races may assert and exercise a mastery over 
any other of them ; but it would have been strange 
had not the theory been turned to the defence of a 
dominancy of white men over black men, for which 
the self-interest of the stronger party would naturally 
be glad to find a providential Avarrant anticipating the 
human assertion of it. 

This question of races, of the providential and 
actual relations between them as all in one sense hu- 
man beings, but as not all equal in the destinies to 
which they are born and in the capacities with which 
they are furnished, underlies, as a profoundly interest- 
ing moral question, the Avhole subject of the relations 
between the weak and the powerful of God's children. 
It has already had one practical solution, and is yet 
to have another on this continent, where we are living 
in such abounding prosperity. One of these races of 
men, — the red men, — the original reamers over these 
scenes of earth, have wasted away before the advan- 
cing tread of the white men. They were too wildly 
noble in their savage instincts to be degraded into 
slaves; they were too wayward and restless in the 
fibre and tissue of their organism to submit to the re- 
straints of civilization; and so they have perished. We 
make romances and poems about them, now that they 
have vanished. But existence, under the conditions 
which alone was congenial with their nature, seemed 



22 



possible to them only when they were alone on this 
soil. Over the record of their barbarities, and the 
wrongs of the white men toward them, we discuss, and, 
to the satisfaction of some, settle the issue, — that, 
when two races of men are brought together upon the 
same region of the earth, the race that is weaker in 
the gifts and culture of the mind, even though it be 
stronger in the muscles and sinews of the body, must 
either serve as slaves, or perish as victims. Utter ex- 
tinction, has proved, of these two alternatives, to be the 
destined fate of the red men ; and enslavement has 
been claimed to be the necessary and legitimate des- 
tiny of the black men. It was under the accepted 
belief of this opinion, as ratified by the Jewish Scrip- 
tures, by experience, and the constitution of things, 
though not as yet leaning upon the modern theory of 
an original plurality of the human stock, that negro 
slavery was first introduced upon our continent. But 
while that was an accepted and prevailing opinion, 
there were, from the first, wise and good persons, scru- 
pulous and conscientious individuals, here and there, 
who doubted it, and, by a long foresight or misgiving, 
dreaded the retribution which slavery would at some 
distant time inflict. If these doubters objected, they 
were not heeded, nor even heard. The whole force 
of opinion was the other way. The great Methodist 
preacher, Whitefield, pleaded strongly for the intro- 
duction of slavery into the Colony of Georgia; and it 
came in solely and entirely through his agency. The 
general approbation of slavery as a divine ordinance 
might have been shaken at the date when we took 

LtfTC. 



23 



our place among the nations of the earth ; but it was 
still tolerated as a necessary evil, or as the condition of 
a predominant and ultimate good. The Constitution, 
the organic law of our nation, recognizes the rights of 
slaveholders in slave property. And, as any such dis- 
tinct and positive an element in our compact would 
be but a nullity if restricted to a merely literal asser- 
tion, the right recognized carries with it the pledge 
of all needful measures for enforcing it ; and, indeed, 
makes all the parties to the compact joint agents 
for carrying those measures into effect. After the 
prostration of the authority of the former government 
over these Colonies, and the realizing of their asserted 
independence, it seemed as if, with our old traditional 
and historical alienations reviving, our rivalry of 
interests, the hostilities and feuds engendered by a 
long strife, the elements of party animosity already 
working, our shattered fortunes, and our paper securi- 
ties for a crushing debt, — it seemed as if we should 
be made to discover that our only bond of amity was 
in our enmity to the foreign foe ; and that, soon falling 
by the ears, we should do each other infinitely more 
harm than we should have suffered from those whom 
we had resisted. And why did we not 1 What 
averted the dreaded, series of possible calamities ^ 
It was the federation of the States by terms which 
yielded some, and retained others, of the rights of 
separate sovereignties. Our relation to slavery, of 
tolerance, concession, and non-interference, is an en- 
tailed constitutional obligation, involuntary as regards 
those who are living here now, and therefore exclud- 



24: 



ed from the range of our responsibility. The perfect 
ideal of a true republic came to our inheritance sub- 
ject to that abatement Our estate is encumbered 
with a debt, the paper evidences of which are too 
formal, and have been too long recorded, to allow us 
to raise objections because of a breach of morals be- 
tween those who received the equivalent, and entered 
into a recognition of property in human beings. 

That recognition is embraced in the solemn com- 
pact by which, to avert the horrors of anarchy and of 
civil war and to secure the blessings of a Union, we 
entered into a confederation. We could not have 
escaped the evils dreaded, nor secured the blessings 
desired, on any other terms than those which the 
statesmen and the people of those days ratified, and 
gladly ratified. The great instrument to which they 
gave force has realized to us an immeasurable sum of 
good. One of the terms of the compact — that 
which requires of the citizens of all the States to re- 
cognize the local legality of slavery in any State whicli 
establishes it in the exercise of its reserved sovereignty, 
by aiding in the rendition of fugitives from slavery — 
casts a dark shade over the glory of our whole Consti- 
tution, as freemen would now love to boast of it as 
a perfect scheme of government. We are held to 
the terms of the compact, and to that one among 
them all which seems to us to be but a Shylock's 
bargain. Time and experience and rival interests 
have greatly altered the views and the relations of the 
two parties which now exist in reference to that arti- 
cle in our joint covenant. Indeed, we may say that 



25 



these two parties have been created and defined solely 
by a change of opinions and a growth of rival inte- 
rests in connection with the primary and the inferential 
obligations and rights recognized in that article. 

We plead on our side, in these Free States, that it 
could not have entered into the views of the framers 
of our Constitution, that slavery should be a perpe- 
tual, a strengthening, and a dominant influence in this 
republic of freemen ; but that they expected it to 
yield, in two or three generations, to the spirit of our 
institutions, and to pass away from the whole of the 
land, as it has done from a majority of the States which 
were the only original members of the republic. We 
insist that slavery was legalized only where it then 
existed ; but that, as it has ever since been claiming 
new territory, and has found it to be essential to its 
life that it should enlist the dignity and the patronage 
and the countenance of the General Government to its 
direct or indirect support, it cannot be excluded from 
debate in our councils, and, when it enters there, must 
provoke strife. We urge, too, that time and experience, 
and the progress of all humane and righteous princi- 
ples among men, demand and justify a moral assault 
upon slavery ; that our pride and our consciences are 
wounded by any active, and even by any quiescent, 
partnership of our own in the interest of that institu- 
tion ; and that we wish so resolutely to stand free of 
incurring any responsibility for it, that we are natu- 
rally kept watchful and suspicious of all political 
intriguers who are in its interests. This is our side 
of the case now at issue. 

4 



26 



In the mean while, as we have been ridding our 
own States of slavery, and have been brought and 
educated to see its evil and mischief, and to hate it as 
an outrage to humanity, the other party to our com- 
mon compact have been brought, by the circumstances 
under which they have lived, to look kindly and ap- 
provingly on slavery, — to love it, to depend upon it, 
to identify with it their property, their pride, and their 
civil rights, and to vindicate it as of the very purpose 
and sanction of God. As slavery has grown more 
and more hateful to us, it has become more and 
more tolerable and righteous and desirable and pro- 
fitable to them. There is no denying this fact ; and 
practical wisdom demands that we deal with it mag- 
nanimously and candidly as a fact. They hear their 
religious teachers defend slavery, from what they 
believe to be the Word of God. They grow up from 
childhood under its influence as a patriarchal institu- 
tion. They insist that the same Providence which 
gave them their peculiar soil, fit only for particular 
crops, has also given them negroes as the only proper 
laborers. They hold to that theory of the races which 
makes the weaker the rightful servants of the stronger. 
They contend that humanity and charity sanction the 
institution, and that it is their solemn duty as well as 
their right to maintain it. They put their finger upon 
the letter of the solemn national compact, and argue 
that a fair inference from it justifies them in asking 
even more than it expressly secures to them. And 
this is their side of the case. 

And their side pleads with us by additional ap- 



27 



peals, which must have weight with kindly and con- 
siderate natures. That side is the weaker one in 
reason, in morality, in absolute justice, and in all 
physical and substantial resources ; and they know 
it to be the weaker side in all these respects. 
Therefore the burden of charity and conciliation 
should be with us. We must not wrong white men 
for the sake of righting black men. I see not how 
any persons among us can mock over and ridicule 
their present alarm and wild threats. To my mind, 
there is something profoundly provocative of sympa- 
thy in the furious and reckless excitement under 
which they rage, and boast of what they never can 
fulfil. This excess of courage indicates the despera- 
tion of a harrowing fear. They know that their chief 
and only danger — and that an appalling one — is 
from an insurrection or outbreak among their own 
slaves. How unwise, then, is the recklessness and 
severity of speech, the inflammatory invective, and the 
rage -provoking bitterness, of some of our public 
speakers, who think the numbers of the crowds that 
listen to them certify to the wholesomeness of their 
one-sided harangues ! 

Such is the condition of public affairs under which 
our chief magistrate invites us to give thanks for 
"the preservation of the States united." We pray 
that they may still remain so ; and, for the sake of it, 
we will do and suffer any thing short of making 
barter or sacrifice of truth or righteousness. Let us 
be faithful to our compact till we can alter its terms. 
Let us remember, that among the old Hebrew sen- 



28 



tences of the Psalmist, describing the man whom God 
approves, is this : " He who sweareth to his own hurt, 
and changeth not." But, if the crisis of affairs is 
really upon us, — of which, however, for myself, I 
see no sufficient evidence, — let us meet it with true 
hearts. There are sacred traditions and living con- 
victions of oiu' own, too, — wrought in with our local 
history, and quickening the pulses of the citizens of 
our own Commonwealth, — to which we must be faith- 
ful. Our nation, as a nation, is pledged to freedom. 
Our institutions are fashioned for freemen. Our 
l^rosperity cannot, in the long-run, consist with any 
unrighteousness. We have no right of interference 
with slavery where it now exists ; and, therefore, we 
are morally and politically free of all responsibility 
for it. If we are called upon in any way, direct or 
indirect, to patronize, support, or extend it, our own 
loyalty to freedom and righteousness will demand that 
we refuse to do so, even at the risk of dismembering, 
or of suffering the dismemberment of, our republic. 
At the point at which our actual responsibility for 
slavery would begin, we have rights as freemen, 
which we have never parted with, and which we 
shall guard and exercise that we may remain freemen. 
There should be practical wisdom and statesmanship 
among us — perhaps they are reserved among that 
other half of our electors who are not seen at the 
polls — to find and follow the path of rectitude and 
safety in this sharp issue. 

From these distracting strifes in public affairs, we 
turn, with a sense of relief, to the household joys 



29 



and blessings of this grateful festival. It seems sad 
and strange to admit or to fear, amid such abound- 
ing means of good scattered through uncounted 
homes, cheering unnumbered hearts, this day, that the 
passions or the rival interests of a few violent men 
on either side should put such a sum of happiness at 
risk. No : we will regard our common blessings as 
so precious and diffused as to insure themselves. We 
will regard those men as public enemies, who, by 
flippant or reckless speech, imbitter our present dif- 
ferences. We will wait in confidence, that, before 
any real trouble breaks upon us, wise and good men 
who now keep silence, while the turbulent and the 
angry alone are heard, will calm the storm. Above 
all, we will trust still in the providential care of that 
Divine Husbandman, who planted in the wilderness 
the vine which has nourished and sheltered us. Its 
roots are invigorated by the waters of two oceans ; 
its boughs spread over the land. Sprigs and fruit 
from its luxurious growth are waiting us at our tables 
now. May all the fruits which it bears be healthful, 
and its protection be a blessing to all the children 
of God whom it overshadows ! 



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